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Motivated Skepticism

Edited by Vladimir_Nesov, PeerInfinity, et al. last updated 10th Mar 2012
You are viewing revision 1.16.0, last edited by Vladimir_Nesov

Motivated skepticism is the mistake of deliberately applying more skepticism to claims that you don't like (or intuitively disbelieve), than to claims that you do like. Because emotional disposition towards a claim isn't generally evidence about its truth, including it in the process of arriving at a belief means holding the belief partly for reasons other than because it's true.

Blog posts

  • Knowing About Biases Can Hurt People by Eliezer Yudkowsky
  • Avoiding Your Belief's Real Weak Points by Eliezer Yudkowsky

See also

  • Least convenient possible world
  • Filtered evidence, Conservation of expected evidence
  • Color politics, Motivated cognition
  • Positive bias
  • Rationalization, Oops
  • Dangerous knowledge

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